I slept worse last night than I have in some time, probably because
I’m horrified that such a large percentage of our country is filled with
bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other manner of horrifying
things. I’m a disabled woman (I’m autistic) and I’m now fearing for my
safety and rights due to the rampant ableism on display from these
people.

I’m an autistic rights activist, and I refuse to stop
fighting to protect anyone who’s marginalized, not just my fellow
autistic people. If you need someone in your corner, let me know,
because I’ll do my level best to help you through. We’re going to get
through this because we’re going to fight back and show people just how
amazing humanity can truly be. We don’t take our orders from demagogues,
we take them from our hearts. We don’t follow, we lead.

Let’s
continue to lead and fight for human rights for all. I’ll be right there
on the front lines with you. It’s never been a better time to stand up
for what’s right and ensure that everyone can live in safety, regardless
of gender identity, sexuality, race, ability, past traumas, financial
need, age, or anything else. Everyone deserves to feel safe to be
themselves and I won’t rest until they are. You with me?

People have been responding to both of these posts in varying ways, and the one that makes me the saddest is multiple people feeling like they have no fight left in them. These are the people I've always fought for the most because someone needs to keep going and carry them.

In 2013, I watched the Red Sox win the World Series for the third time in one decade, and it taught me more than the wins in 2004 and 2007 did. This particular win came through sheer force of will. The Red Sox were carried by David Ortiz throughout that World Series. One man was able to pick up 24 other men on his back and carry them to a title because he believed so strongly in helping his city heal from a horrible event, the bombings that had happened back in April of that year. He was so motivated that his determination carried the team along. He motivated them and he gave them strength. We need people to be like Papi and stand up and be that determined person who carries everyone else, and I'm ready to be that person now. My friends and family need it. I needed it not long ago myself. I'm actively trying to be the person I needed when I was younger, and I'm realizing now that a lot more people need that person than just me. I have to work even harder now to make sure that people have that person.

I had a panic attack last night as the results of the election came in. I hadn't had one like that since 2011, when I was still dealing with an emotionally abusive friendship. This morning, I quickly realized that my fear had become anger and motivation. I also noticed that not everyone was able to respond this way, and that is why I'm writing this post now - someone has to lead the charge to fight back for those who are unable to, so here I am. I'm angry, I'm resentful, and I won't accept anything less than human dignity.

Think back to about a year ago when an indie game called Undertale was released to great critical acclaim. The messages of that game were simple - be kind to others, especially those who are different from you, and never give up. Stay determined. Stay determined to make this world a better place for everyone, not just the people who are like you.

When you die in-game, the following screen pops up:

"Game Over - you cannot give up just yet." This is followed immediately by the name you chose to play with being told to "stay determined." Sure enough, you're back in the game right afterwards from the last place you saved.

This feels like a game over right now. But anyone who's played video games can tell you that game overs just mean you get to try again. You can always pick back up from your last save point and fight on even harder. And eventually, you do beat that boss or that level, and it's so satisfying because you worked so hard for it and you finally achieved it. Right now, we've got an abhorrent boss fight ahead of us - there's a large mass of mooks who believe in subjugation of human beings who aren't like them. Stand up to them the same way you'd stand up to a boss's subordinates in a boss battle. Make sure they know you're not complacent with their bias, and continue to fight for what's right until that boss, Bigotry, is finally defeated.

The only way to truly lose is to stop playing the game, and my parents didn't raise a quitter.

Monday, October 24, 2016

I haven't had a chance to write much lately due to working two separate archival jobs (go me!), but I feel like as a historian I need to weigh in on this issue, even though it's been a few weeks since the announcement.

It's old news now that Autism Speaks changed their mission statement to eliminate references to "finding a cure." In fact, here's their new mission statement in full, right from their website:

Autism Speaks is dedicated to promoting solutions, across the spectrum and throughout the lifespan, for the needs of individuals with autism and their families through advocacy and support; increasing understanding and acceptance of autism spectrum disorder; and advancing research into causes and better interventions for autism spectrum disorder and related conditions.

Autism Speaks enhances lives today and is accelerating a spectrum of solutions for tomorrow.

Okay, so according to this they're not interested in a cure anymore, and that's great! That's a wonderful step in the right direction! However, there are words I'm a bit wary of in here still due to some historical context. There was an event during the Third Reich's stranglehold on Germany called Aktion T4, a move by the government to systematically execute thousands of disabled and mentally ill people. Officially, 70,273 people were killed, although there could easily be more of them that weren't recorded. Aktion T4 was only a test run, however, for Nazi Germany's execution of 6 million Jewish people and millions of other people. That's right, they tested the Final Solution out on people like me. Therefore, seeing the word 'solutions' always makes me a bit nervous because I happen to be a working historian. I'm not sure that it's meant in that way here, but it's still a word I'm very cautious about.

Additionally, if there's no need for a cure, why still look for a cause? Just throwing that out there, too.

With the death of Suzanne Wright, it's possible that Autism Speaks is going to be able to start moving in a new direction since Bob and Suzanne Wright more or less had a stranglehold on the entire organization and were extremely interested in finding a cure. There are now two autistic people on the Board of Directors, and frankly, I'm hoping to see more there in the future because for Autism Speaks to be as legitimate as possible they need to let autistic people themselves do the primary speaking so that people listen and learn from us. It's very possible that they actually are working on doing the right thing and working towards acceptance instead of a cure, and that would be nice. However, I think they owe us an apology for pushing forward so much hateful rhetoric and for their fear-mongering for the past eleven years that has vilified us and cast us as something that needs to be eliminated from society. For this, I propose we take a look at the site of one of my archival jobs, the Riverside Church in the City of New York.

In May of 1969, an activist by the name of James Forman interrupted a service at Riverside to deliver his Black Manifesto, demanding reparations for slavery and cultural injustice delivered to African-Americans by white people for centuries. Not long after, Riverside's pastor, Ernest T. Campbell, replied with a sermon called The Case For Reparations, supporting Forman's notion. It got me thinking - autistic people have suffered in silence for centuries, only to have been suddenly deemed an epidemic in the past twenty years and treated as less than human. Do we not, too, deserve reparations, especially those of us who are routinely dismissed, such as female and non-white autistic people? Do we not deserve to fight for our human rights, as well, and demand an apology from the organization that turned society against us, that caused the condition we identify with to be used as an insult? I believe that until Autism Speaks issues an apology and actively works to undo the damage they caused with their rhetoric, we can't fully believe they are working in our favor.

Continue, therefore, to stand up for yourselves in the face of ableism. Do not automatically expect Autism Speaks to speak for us since it's clear that it was our urging and activism that brought them to make this change in the first place and they haven't spoken for us properly before. Continue to urge and fight for change and improvement in this world - and don't forget that Autism Speaks still owes us an apology.

Reparations would be nice, too, since I have student loans to pay off.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

I haven't written here in ages, and it's because I've had an archival temp job that's kept me very busy! It's been really nice to be working, even though it won't be for too much longer - doing what I love and being paid for it feels wonderful.

It's also a bit odd to be working on a blog entry around 3 in the morning, I know. I'm fairly nocturnal as it is, but I'm up late working on NYCC cosplay stuff with a friend (it's a Saturday so it's okay) and I had a realization about myself that I felt like I needed to write about.

As I've occasionally mentioned on this blog, in late 2011 I ended a friendship that had become unintentionally emotionally abusive for me due to the other person's struggles with themselves and things that had happened to them. I know my friend didn't mean to take things out on me the way they did, but it got to a point where I knew the best way to protect both of us was to get myself out of there. This friendship unequivocally changed me as a person and made me grow in ways that have been both positive and negative. I had a realization about one of the more negative things that has happened to me tonight and I'm currently sitting here typing this out so I don't cry as my friend sews next to me.

Growing up, it was difficult to find full acceptance from my peers. People would sometimes hang out with me and drop me or even hang out with me out of pity until I got to high school and developed a set of friends (who are still my best friends today and are amazing). I was able to be myself around my friends in high school and that was so important for me because normally who I was wasn't acceptable to other people. In college, I was also initially rejected by my peers because nobody at the preppy liberal arts school wanted to be around the weird baseball girl. I did find some friends, though, one of whom became my college roommate. She'd lost her mother not long before she met me, and I tried to make sure I was a good, supportive friend because nobody deserves to lose someone they love to cancer. Eventually, though, her depression caught up with her, and she desperately sought to plug the mother-shaped hole that had been left behind. The problem was that to fill the hole, she began to unconsciously use me as the plug. This put pressure on me to be constantly strong and supportive and eventually triggered my 2009 OCD mental breakdown, which I don't think I fully came out of until 2011, when I ended the friendship and had time to mentally recover. Her mental illness plus my mental illness ended up being a really bad cocktail, so being roommates for two school years probably wasn't the best decision for either of us but we didn't have too many other options and I didn't have many other friends at school. We were both trapped until I graduated and slowly weaned her off of me because I knew she wouldn't be able to recover herself any other way. I did what I did to protect both of us, and I hope it helped (a mutual friend informed me recently that she got happily married, so I think I did the right thing for her).

The realization I came to tonight as I was sitting here was that I'm still stuck in a certain pattern that combines my early lack of acceptance from my peers and my desperation for approval that developed during the emotionally abusive friendship. I often go far out of my way for my friends to help them with things and generally try my best to be a good friend (a thing I have to put a lot of conscious thought into to make sure I'm doing it socially acceptably). I'm willing to put my own well-being and even my health aside for my friends sometimes, and that's where things can get a bit dicey because I'm not good at drawing a line between taking care of myself and helping other people. I actively choose to be kind because I want to be kind and help others - it feels right to me to do. The problem is that I also feel this nagging desire in the back of my mind to do as much as I can for others so that maybe someone at some point somewhere will think I'm important and treat me as such. I do so much more than I have to in a desperate quest for validation, and I'm not sure it'll ever succeed because it's self-defeating (the more I do, the more people are willing to ask me because they know I'll do it because I want to help). I want to matter to my friends the way I've rarely felt that I do, and yet I go about trying to earn that importance in a way that's so exhausting and ineffective that it's never going to happen that way.

And yet after all that, I feel selfish saying that I want to be acknowledged in some way, so I don't even tell people that I want to know I matter. I feel like bringing it up is asking for something that I shouldn't be asking for, that it's something my friends feel that they already give me. Implied acknowledgement doesn't exactly work when your friend is autistic, however - I'm going to need occasional blatant confirmation that yes, I'm an important friend, too, and my needs matter just as much as everyone else's.

I just need to break out of this cycle because tonight I realized just how detrimental to me it could potentially become. I'll work my way out of it like I work my way out of everything, but just realizing that I feel selfish for wanting acknowledgement that I and my needs matter to my friends is concerning enough to me because it reminds me that although I've moved on from that emotionally abusive relationship, I still haven't healed all the scars.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Finding characters I relate to has always been a fairly difficult task for me throughout my life because autistic characters just don't pop up in fiction very often, particularly when it comes to autistic female characters. This is something I've discussed before - those rare characters I click with tend to be malecharacters only because there are very few female characters who really remind me of myself.

And yet here I am, 27 years old and suddenly relating really intensely to a teenager who flies around in a giant green lion and fights aliens.

Voltron predates me (1989) by a few years; it premiered in the U.S. in 1984 and ran until 1985. It's actually a lot like the original incarnation of Power Rangers in the U.S. in that multiple anime series were mashed up and edited to make a new series entirely for the American market. (Specifically, season 1 was taken from Beast King GoLion and season 2 was taken from Armored Fleet Dairugger XV.) The series had a few U.S.-made sequels, and as of 2016 it now has a reboot that you can watch on Netflix done by Dreamworks. I'm a little more than halfway through so far and it's doing a wonderful job in capturing the spirit of the original series whilst giving the protagonists more characterization and depth.

Specifically, I really relate to what they've done with Pidge. Spoilers are ahead, so I'll put this under a cut just in case you happen to both read my blog and want to watch Voltron without being spoiled.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Somehow or other - maybe I signed some petition a long time ago - I got on the mailing list of an organization called the Autism Spectrum Disorder Foundation (not to be confused with asdfmovie). Every so often, they send me envelopes hoping I'll give them money even though since I'm an autistic person they should be giving me money. In general, I rarely have money to give at the moment since I'm job-hunting right now, but I'd much rather give my hard-earned cash to ASAN or the Autism Women's Network, organizations that I know are looking out for me and people like me.

Today I got a letter from ASDF trying to get me to give them money again, and this one actually made me angry.

Oh, yeah, this is promising. Calling me my parents' worst nightmare. Great way to start this one off.

So already irritated, I opened the envelope...

I'm so dreaded, you guys. I'm a national emergency. I'm a monster, ooooooh.

Here's the deal: yes, families with individuals on the spectrum absolutely need and deserve financial support to help their family members survive in a world that's not designed for them. We all could use some help with that. Services are definitely needed for both autistic children and autistic adults. But worded like this? This makes autism sound like some sort of death sentence. You know what actually could be a death sentence? Not vaccinating your children. Yes, autistic people - myself included! - and their families can use extra financial support since we often require special services to ensure that we can make it in this world that clearly was made for people who aren't autistic. However, scare tactics aren't the best way to accomplish that. My existence is not a tragedy to exploit. Neither are the existences of all of my fellow autistic people. If people were willing to take a few minutes to listen to us, they'd realize we're not that different from them. We generally want the same thing as they do - to be treated decently and respectfully.

So don't be afraid to donate to help families and individuals with autism - both children and adults need services and support! However, any organization that portrays autism as some sort of menace or an epidemic is likely misguided at best and deliberately using scare tactics at worst. (In fact, autism isn't even an epidemic - we've just expanded the diagnostic criteria and understand the signs more. I myself wasn't diagnosed until I was 20.) For organizations that you can support instead knowing that your money will directly help autistic people, check my resources page out here.

Initially, I went to recycle the letter I got since I obviously had no reason to keep the vile thing around. But then I had a better idea...

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Well, not really, but my friend, documentarian, and fellow Aspie Alyssa Huber featured us in her latest video on her blog. It's all about the therapeutic relationships autistic folks have with their pets, and given Murphy's importance to me when she put out a call for stories I jumped right in! You can see Alyssa's blog post here, and her video is below.

Trigger warning for extremely cute footage of Murphy as a baby.

This cat is the best cat I've ever had the fortune to share my home with, all 22.2 pounds of him. Love you, Murph.